Treasury Says It Will Agree To Cap Wall Street Executive Pay

One of the major sticking points of the inevitable Wall Street bailout was executive pay — but the New York Times says that Treasury Secretary and former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Henry M. Paulson Jr., has agreed to compensation caps for the executives of firms that benefit from the bailout.

Republican officials said Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had agreed to demands from lawmakers in both parties to limit the pay of executives whose companies benefit from the bailout. The enormous pay packages of some Wall Street executives, coupled with the realization among nonwealthy Americans that the crisis could affect their financial foundations, have created an incendiary issue on Capitol Hill.

That’s a good term! It’s inclusive and condescending at the same time. “Nonwealthy Americans.” I’m a “Nonwealthy American,” how about you?

@NitrousO: Assuming all wealthy people backstabbed the poor is both closed-minded and harmful to others. The classics like Jobs (who gets paid $1/yr but is still weathier than most of us will ever be) or Gates or Dell, etc… who all started from hard work and an idea and rose to riches… they do not deserve your hate.

Gotta love this politically correct world we live in, we are no longer poor, middle-class, or even upper middle-class just “non-wealthy”. The decline of American civilization will one day be traced back to the rise of political correctness.

@upsidedownpaddle: I think it’s more funny for the fact that less than 1% of Americans could be called wealthy, and yet we’re the “non”.

Not to mention the fact that the issue is apparently limited to people who aren’t wealthy, as opposed to the people who have a lot of money in Wall Street, pay higher taxes which are going towards bailing these companies out, and tend to have free market leanings which are contradictory to this bailout in the first place.

@Bladefist: Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a provision where any company getting the bailout money had to, as a condition of getting it, terminate their executives without severance of any sort, and provide them immunity against being sued for breaching their salary contract?

“compensation caps for the executives of firms that benefit from the bailout.”

Well, it’s a step in the right direction. Let’s hope one day the government can translate this to mainstream culture. No business should be able to raise prices/cancel health insurance plans/etc. just to give the CEO a sub-prime-clusterfuck-protection bonus (I’m looking at you, WACHOVIA!). You can whine and complain all you want about it being against the ideals of a free market and capitalism; CEOs who provide nothing to a company except wining and dining clients do NOT deserve sums of money as large as these bastards are making.

@blackmage439: Or the fact that companies are required to care more about pleasing their shareholders rather than their customers or employees. Its like I can’t fathom why our country allows health insurance to be ‘for-profit’ so that its more important to pay shareholders than pay for medical treatment and that’s why so many medical treatments are denied.

Everyone’s ripping on the executives (and with good reason), but they aren’t the only ones at fault. Where were the boards of directors? The shareholders? They should have stopped the executives from taking extraordinary risks. They didn’t, and they’re just as culpable for the final result.

Shareholders have no real power in a majority of companies. They do often hold some minor power over the board of directors from year to year, but they frequently hold no sway over the day-to-day decisions of a company, nor do they hold much sway over longer-term decisions.

In principle, you’re correct – but that’s like saying that all of the individuals who were suddenly unable to pay their mortgages were 100% at fault, despite many of them being led to believe (by self-proclaimed ‘experts’) that their ARM packages were perfectly sound.

The burden falls on those responsible for the daily operation of the companies, as well as the day-to-day changes in policy – the CEOs, CFOs, Presidents, and VPs.

So the taxpayers have to bail out the private companies, virtually no questions asked, and the C level executives still get a paycheck.

I wonder what would happen if the taxpayers/consumers asked the private companies to bail them out of personal debt.

I owe CitiMortgage a respectable sum. I’d like them to “bail me out” and allow me to keep the house. I didn’t make a slew of bad business decisions like the major companies, but it is worth a try. I’m pretty sure that Citibank would laugh in my face.

Too vague to be meaningful. Cap it at what? Are they reducing golden parachutes to only a million dollars, for example? That’s a lot less than the execs might be expecting, but it’s a lot more than the annual pay of people who aren’t responsible for this problem…

Depends on how the define the cap. Is it, “well, we’ll have to fly buisness class for Muffy’s sweet fourteen party in Tahiti”? or, “Well, we’ll have to sell Muffy’s jet and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ around a sheet cake on the Jersey Shore”?

Let me guess, executive pay will be capped at $50m? Or maybe a paltry $10m, with no limits on stock options? How ever will executives survive?!

The former CEO of Bear Sterns, who I might add was FIRED, got a $200m payout. How does one negotiate that? “I’m sorry I lost our firm billions and billions of dollars. But not really that sorry b/c I walked away with $200 mil.”

the way i see it, these guys (CEOs, CFOs, & your various BoDs) would basically become gs-13 or gs-14, which would set their pay range to $68,000-$104,000 (no bonuses, stock options, performance pay, etc.).

oh, what’s the matter – a little too nonwealthy for you? won’t be able to afford that 4th vacation home on the ocean? pity.

that’s the beauty of america – we all have choices. you can choose to forgo your ridiculous salaries & compensation packages & save your company, or you can forever be remembered by business scholars throughout the world as “the idiots that tanked american finance”. let me introduce you to a little thing us nonwealthians practice frequently – it’s called “sacrifice”. get used to it – you’ll be doing it a lot more lately.

At risk of redundancy, I think this is worth repeating… There is so much passionate feeling about this issue, and the bill hasn’t happened yet, so I hope everyone who has had time to comment or think or read about what we could do with a cool trillion has taken time to call their representative and/ or senator… My understanding is that most congresspeople are taking comments to heart on this issue and for once, you might feel like your voice is heard…

Of course Congress is taking its constituents’ comments to heart! It is making scapegoats out of a few CEOs, and punishing them by paying them excessive salaries with taxpayer money, rather than paying them with disgustingly excessive salaries.

The real issue is how long these CEOs should be sentenced to jail… which should be decided after we have impeached and recalled most of the government.

We are the change we have been waiting for!
–Barak Obama and this slogan were paid for by the American Subprime Mortgage Industry

@axiomatic: Fannie/Freddie are hardly private sector. Their failure, has caused a lot of trouble in the private sector. So, its a bit more complex then that. I’m all for not bailing them out, as long as fannie/freddie go away forever.

Caps? We should be talking about how big of pentalies the CEOS and others should be paying. Rather than “limiting the amount of compensation” they we should be talking about limiting their freedom as they sit in jails rotting for destroying our economy.

This whole thing is insane. I was going to start writting a book about it about a year ago called The Currency Convergence. I wish I had.

I’m going to suggest the cap I’d like to see applied to everyone, not just (soon to be) government entities. The highest paid executive cannot earn more (including values of all perks and benefits) that 100 times the lowest paid full time person, including all temps and subcontractors. Pay that janitor 20,000 with no healthcare and you can bring home a cool $2 million.

Do your job well, make your company money and want a raise? Well you are going to have to bring the bottom up with you. It’s capitalism, because those who work harder still earn more and are rewarded for it, but with thins one simple restraint from greed.

Any money they get should be considered a forgivable loan. If they burn the money and come back asking for more, the government should sue them to get the money back. If they at least do something, they can pay it back over 5-10 years. If they meet certain, strict criteria, they don’t have to pay anything back.

If they’re going to get our money, they better be forced to sit down and think very carefully how they are going to spend it. There have to be heavy enough terms on the bailout money that corporations have to actually decide if taking the money is in their best interest. No free lunch.

Unless the limit is $0, I say it’s a step in the right direction, but still not enough. These CEO’s, well most of them anyway, ran their companies into the ground with bad at best, predatory at worst, practices. Give them nothing, and don’t let the door hit ‘em in the ass on the way out.

To all those suggesting a buck a year, zero, or minimum wage…How are you going to force someone to work for that? Slavery? These guys made a mess but we still need qualified people at the helm to try and correct the problem. You’re not going to attract any talent unless the pay is respectable. Not obscene but respectable.

@HIV 2 Elway Resurrected: You’re working off the assumption that they compensation they get for what they’ve done would be the same as the compensation their replacement would be is. I say give the current executives a offensive offer, then offer competitive rates after clearing out the incompetent fools that caused this.

@White Speed Receiver: No, I’m working off the assumption that top talent aint cheap. I’m working off the assumption that if you wanted me to take on a high profile job, you’re going to have to pay me to do so. If you offer low pay, you’ll get low talent. The compensation for this position should be similar to the compensation for our elected officials. Yes, thats more than most of us make, but its also taking on much more responsibility than any of us take.

You get what you pay for. We are all paying for this, do we really want to low ball the people running the show? There is a drastic difference between $10M plus a year and $250k a year. I’m just worried that tax payers will still flip over $250k.

A company CEO should have a salary which is entirely commission, a commission pay which is determined by a performance score, judged by either the company’s employees anonymously, or by a non-profit organization which grades CEO performance across the industry.

Ahhh… Paulson. He’s the epitome of corporate America (and the State/Federal Government) in the 21st Century: Absolutely no shame on anything. Not even a single attempt (not even thinly veiled ones) to disguise connivery, greed and pure malice.

“Ethics, responsibility and everything else be damned. I want nothing but the money and it’s mine, damn you!”

> an ingenious anti-review, explicit “no ex post facto” provision = perfect for slush funds, golden and a matching platinum parachutes for the CEOs. Not to mention other abuses that most of us would never think of.

> making threats that Wall Street won’t participate if there are penalties and if Congress doesn’t act fast = Why not let the companies die outright if they won’t voluntarily seek help? We might actually end up living better and richer without them after all.

> An ambiguous agreement to a pay cap for CEOs = a large percentage of the $700b for each CEO?

Just who is he trying to fool? The working and the middle class? The intellectuals?

F*ck you Paulson and Bernanke. May all of you burn in hell indefinitely for selling the backbones of your country for money.

The only acceptable plan would cap the executive pay at these companies to 3-4x the average salary for their primary residence, as well as eliminating all non-performance-based benefits packages.

Executives DO deserve more money – they just don’t deserve anywhere near the 30-40x they currently receive. Capping these salaries to 3-4x sets them in line with pre-‘golden parachute’ salaries, while still providing them with far more money than any individual can reasonably spend.

Congress needs to flatly refuse the bail out. Paulson said the other day after much arm twisting by a few Senators that the horrible outcome he keeps referring to would be that businesses would lose access to credit lines they use to operate resulting in businesses closing and people losing jobs.

So then why don’t we use that 700 billion to directly provide some lines of credit to businesses or small banks & credit unions for now. Then let Wall Street sort out their mess themselves. When we refused to bail out Lehman bros. they eventually found a buyer. AIG rejected a couple of offers hoping they would get a better deal from US.

This whole emergency no questions asked give us all your money stunt sounds way too much like the run up to the Iraq war.

Not all of the economic experts think we even need the bail out at all and are saying it won’t work and we will never get the money back.